Restless Dolly Maunder

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024

Dolly Maunder was born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors were finally starting to creak ajar for women. Born into a poor farming family in country New South Wales but clever, energetic and determined, she spent her restless life pushing at those doors.

Most women like Dolly have more or less disappeared from view, remembered only in a family photo album as a remote figure in impossible clothes, and maybe for a lemon-pudding recipe. Restless Dolly Maunder brings one of them to life as a person we can recognise and whose struggles we can empathise with.

As she did for her mother in One Life, Kate Grenville uses family memories and research to imagine her way into the life of her grandmother. This is the story of a woman born into a world of limits and obstacles who was able - though at a cost - to make a life for herself. Her battles and triumphs helped to open doors for the women who came after.